It is sometimes difficult and messy to crack open and egg, and, moreover, to separate the yolk of the egg from the white. Various egg-separating devices are known in the art that facilitate performance of this task including, U.S. Pat. No. 4,068,573 to Romero, U.S. Pat. No. 4,665,813 to Maisonneuve, and U.S. Pat. No. 5,083,508 to Banks et al.
A main concept followed by many devices for cracking open an egg is to penetrate the egg's shell by means of piercing members, and to spread its shell parts apart from the penetration area. One main problem, which has not yet fully been solved by the currently available devices, is suitability of the device to eggs of different sizes. Even though all eggs look the same, each has its own size, and therefore, the penetration of the piercing members of the egg cracking device into the egg's shell should start at a different distance between the piercing members and an imaginary longitudinal axis of the egg, per each egg size. Respectively, spreading the shell parts apart should start with a different distance between the piercing members and said imaginary axis of the egg per each egg size, i.e. immediately after the egg's shell has been penetrated. Further penetration should simultaneously be stopped in order to avoid smashing the shell and its contents. None of the available devices teaches how a device of a predetermined size can handle a range of different sizes of eggs, e.g. of widths between 40 and 50 millimeters, while independent of the egg's size, keeping an accurate correlation between stopping the penetration stage and starting the spreading apart stage.
It is therefore a main object of the present invention to provide a mechanism for automatically determining the size of an individual egg to be cracked and automatically calibrating the cracking device for matching the size of each such individual egg.